Cloning and the "Brave New Rhetoric"

"Cloning has not been reported as an unmitigated evil. The potential medical and agricultural benefits are usually mentioned. These benefits, however, are always juxtaposed to the dangers of cloning in alarmist, emotion-packed ways--moderately useful medicines and improvements in animal research versus a 'brave new world.'
"Most people have never read Brave New World, but that doesn't matter. The scores of references to Brave New World aren't about the book; they are about the trope connected to the book. Brave New World is a stand alone reference, image, and warning about dehumanization, totalitarianism, and technology-wrought misery--epitomized and made possible by the technology of cloning. There is no comparable book that praises cloning as a liberating technology. Brave New World stands alone, framing the issue as a dichotomy between vaguely helpful medicine and Fordist nightmares of enslaved and manufactured citizens. This easy and morally non-neutral reference was a constant presence in response to clone reporting--along with more contemporary object lessons.
"PBS's Newshour jumps from an explanation of cloning to a Jurassic Park scene where a cloned T-rex terrorizes humans and then to a picture of a copy of Brave New World. Nightline teases their story by saying, 'Tonight, cloning, dawn of a brave new world' and later asking if we are 'tiptoeing into the brave new world?' Time tells us: 'A line had been crossed. A taboo broken. A Brave New World of cookie-cutter humans, baked and bred to order seemed . . . just over the horizon. Ethicists called up nightmare visions of baby farming, of clones cannibalized for spare parts' . . . . Another issue warns us that, 'The possibilities are as endless as they are ghastly: human hybrids, clone armies, slave hatcheries, "delta" and "epsilon" sub-beings out of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World ' . . . . Yet another Time tells us that Neti and Ditto (the embryo-cloned rhesus monkeys) 'were not so much a step toward a brave new world as a diversion' . . . . U.S. News and World Report warns: ' A world of clones and drones, of The Boys from Brazil . . . was suddenly within reach' . . . . The references continue, including the obligatory Frankenstein comparisons. But only rarely do the assumptions get questioned, as when Bonnie Steinbock remarks on PBS that one misconception about cloning is The Boys from Brazil scenario where clones are robotic and easily brainwashed. She says cloning is nothing more than asexual reproduction and people usually act frightened of anything new.

"The reference to Brave New World in cloning reports is consistent with Valerie Hartounie's analysis of its appearance in other reproductive technology debates. She writes:

'In an otherwise diverse and contesting set of literatures spanning medicine, law, ethics, feminism, and public policy . . . Brave New World is a persistent and authoritative presence . . . the work is frequently invoked only in passing or by title. In either case, the authority and centrality of the text are simply assumed, as is its relevance . . . Whether proffered as illustration, prophecy, or specter, invocations of Huxley's tale clearly function as a kind of shorthand for a host of issues having to do generally with the organization, application, and regulation of these new technologies.' [Hartounie cite below]

"Seeding any discussion of cloning with apocalyptic, slippery slope anxiety, Brave New World and its contemporary offspring are treated as warnings by farsighted social critics more attuned to the dangers of science than naive or misguided scientists. This view of science is part and parcel of the brave new rhetoric. Science may hold the answers to many important questions, but it is amoral and dangerous, and the scientists who give their lives to it are treated alternately as arrogant or naive. Article titles such as Newsweek's 'Little Lamb, Who Made Thee?' point toward scientists' intrusion on God's power, while at the same time exposing their political simplemindedness by writing:

'The Roslin scientists had no sooner trotted out Dolly than they assured everyone who asked that no one would ever, ever, apply the technology that made Dolly to humans. Pressed to answer whether human cloning was next, scientists prattled on about how immoral, illegal and pointless such a step would be. But as The Guardian pointed out, "Pointless, unethical and illegal things happen every day" . . . .'

Time asks if science has finally 'stepped over the line' in embryo cloning and assures us later with Dolly that it indeed has. Time then quotes Leon Kass: 'Science is close to crossing some horrendous boundaries . . . Here is an opportunity for human beings to decide if we're simply going to stand in the path of the technological steamroller or take control and help guide its direction' . . . . PBS shows President Clinton warning scientists against 'trying to play God.'

"While these hackneyed themes inevitably come up, one aspect of the commentaries appears to be different from other similar discussions. While repeatedly casting science as dangerous, and cloning as something that the 'people' should stand up and refuse science permission to do, there is a recurring, reluctant admission that science is unstoppable and that human cloning is inevitable. Newsweek claims that Dolly's creation offers this lesson: 'science, for better or worse, almost always wins; ethical qualms may throw some roadblocks in its path, or affect how widespread a technique becomes, but rarely is moral queasiness a match for the onslaught of science' . . . . This uncomfortable acquiescence to science and technology's presumed imperialism occurs again and again. A PBS interviewee says that all efforts to limit and regulate technological progress, including railroads and electricity and gunpowder have failed. Host Jim Lehr summarizes his point: 'So if it's possible to clone human beings, human beings will be cloned.' Charlie Rose says that there will always be private money to support this research and that government cannot stop it. The New York Times quotes Dr. Lee Silver saying that even if laws were in place to forbid cloning, clinics would crop up: 'There's no way to stop it . . . Borders don't matter' . . . . Time argues that we will not be able to stop cloning because the medical benefits are immense. Newsweek quotes Daniel Callahan saying: 'In our society there are two values which will allow anyone to do whatever she wants in human reproduction . . . One is the nearly absolute right to reproduce--or not--as you see fit. The other is that just about anything goes in the pursuit of improved health' . . . . The collective message here seems to be that a brave new world is detestable, but may be unavoidable" (11-13).